Political myths and realities

I found a good post at SB GNXP pointing out how full of crap Thomas Frank is. I didn’t want to forget it, so I linked to it in a comment at a dead UR thread. Turned out it wasn’t quite dead and got a response. My response to that kept bloating to the point that, taking after Hopefully Anonymous, I figured I should make a post out of it at my own blog. Here goes:

The truth does better fit with the 5-caste framework (which I prefer), but MM has just ditched that for 3 castes. Even back in the 5 caste system he talked about how the New Deal state was built through the support of working class Vaisyas, who ditched the Ds when they realized that the government wasn’t working on their behalf. Not the case. Among whites possession of a college degree has become less important while having lower incomes has become a greater predictor of voting D. Among whites being working class is a predictor of voting D within every state. It is weakly predictive at a national level, but the correlation is still positive. Universities do not churn out liberals, college grads tend to the right (people that never want to leave college are a different story). The “religious right” or extreme conservatives tend to be well educated and with high incomes. Not only are the religious more happy, but people who “cling” to guns are the opposite of bitter, and also tend to be well off. Support for Ds among those with advanced degrees is primarily due to public school teachers (so notorious as to spark the phrase “teachers unions of the right“). Their support among the educated is strongest among those with incomes under $75000 “the incomes of teachers, social workers, nurses, and skilled technicians, not of Hollywood stars, bestselling authors, or television producers, let alone corporate executives.”. Rather than intellectual elites, those in education have the lowest standardized test scores. Steve Sailer once explained how Arnold Schwarzenegger’s fight with California public sector unions failed as being because the white middle class identified with them. If someone wants to take on the Minotaur, that’s who they’ll have to deal with (and it will be ugly) not a gaggle of hipsters and journalists (the latter of whom not unlikely in the employ of GOP voters).

MM likes to harp about how “Brahmins” are an elite that look down on Vaisyas and Vaisyas aspire to be and with reference to Ayers says that the “super rich” are very liberal even if the upper class more generally is conservative. But even in Manhattan the richest are more right-wing than the more moderately rich and Yankees fans are to the right of Mets fans (that’s relatively speaking, NYT is still quite liberal). Even the conservatism of the active duty military is due to officers rather than “proles”, and among veterans any correlation dissappears if one controls for the fact that they are older males. The big realignment in politics in the second half of the 20th century was the end of the one-party era of the Solid South, not any sort of rejection by Vaisyas of the New Deal state. Racial attitudes play a big role in MM’s world view, which he claims fall on the latte-sipping Volvo-driving windsurfing vs Bible-thumping flag-waving deer-hunting divide, but Bartels shows that attitudes toward government aid to blacks is best predicted by views on government supported full employment and worst predicted by cultural views. MM accepted my paraphrase of him saying “the Polygon recruits minorities as their Stasi” but Caplan found the more educated blacks are the LESS likely they are to support affirmative action (as I mention in that link, education also predicts less support for more environmental regulation). You’ll note that I make a lot of references to data others have analyzed. If you don’t do that you end up spouting David Brooks style pop sociology, which in Brooks’ case was also flat wrong. MM has similarly made much of distinctive consumer choices of Brahmins, backed up with “Trust me, I live in San Francisco, I know what I’m talking about”. David Brooks is a Manhattenite, but he didn’t know what he was talking about.

BELATED SECOND UPDATE: I had been looking for a much older post at Volokh showing higher support for the GOP among the college educated but failed. A recent one reiterates, links and elaborates.

BONUS UPDATE: A commenter on partisanship gets mocked at Volokh for their ignorance of evidence. What “Just. Does. Not. Happen.” Just. Did.

By “genuinely conservative” are you implying conservationism? Sailer and some others at AmConMag have tried to make that sort of argument.

I think a good case can be made that environmental matters involve significant externalities and so markets are liable to “fail”. On the other hand, I also think governments are likely to fail there as well. The performance of the countries that signed Kyoto is a case in point.

Looking at the abstract for the Bartels piece, it seems to confirm what Andrew Gelman has been saying: The “Culture War” is a tiff between relatively well off and educated Republican/Democrat whites. Most others vote (sociotropically) with bread and butter issues in mind.

‘Culture war’ is a catchphrase that comes from Southern and Heart-land Americans being recalcitrant on the subject of progress.

They drag their feet and complain like petulant children, but in the end they always come around.

That’s why it’s fun for social-democrats, and Coastal elitists to mock the center and south.
Heartlanders just insist on being behind the times but they always come around, even if it takes a generation or two.

When Caplan was discussing the ramifications of restricting the vote to college grads he noted that it would help the GOP and hurt the Dems. I remember a post at Volokh also making that point about college grads.

By happy circumstance Daniel Klein’s recent paper on the exceptions to the liberty maxim expands on what I said about the environment, and also the difference between conservatives and libertarians (which he takes to be less than the difference between them and the left).

I of course agree that scrapping the 5 caste system was bad, but labeling the former Vaisyas “prole” just pissed me the fuck off. The material in this post should show why that’s a bad label for the Outer Party’s supporters.

Hm. haven’t read the critique of Frank and Frank’s rebuttal in much detail, but it looks like they are talking past each other. Frank says:

What’s the Matter With Kansas? is, at its core, a cultural study, a look at the rhetoric and ideology of right-wing populism. At the end of the day such a study does not require or depend upon a majoritarian argument of any kind; it only requires that the cultural formation in question is significant or is somehow worth examining.

In other words, statistical facts are only tangentially relevant to the argument Frank is making. Right-wing populism is certainly a real and important phenomenon, how or even whether it shows up in the NES statistics is secondary. I can hear all the nerds saying “no fair”, but politics is best appraoched through an interpretive/historical methodology than a purely statistical approach. Ideally they should complement each other.

I wonder why you are focusing on this now. Frank has a new book out, Sarah Palin seems to have been designed to appeal to the conservative poor white trash demographic, and the economy is taking so hard that the Republican party may actually get the trouncing it deserves, since pretty much every strata has reason to hate them now. Obama’s back to having a 20 point lead in the Iowa electronic market, with a steep rise this week.

I’m halfway through Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland, which is a history of how the Republican party positioned itself as the vehicle by which resentments of “middle america” at coastal elites and minorities could be channeled into electoral victory.

If you read the Bartels piece you’d see that he’s responding to Frank’s “Class Dismissed” in it.

I am writing about it at this moment because I came across the GNXP post and MM fell further into Brooksville. I don’t vote or care all that much about this election, but I am interested in having an accurate view of how the system works. Frank’s new book hasn’t reached the level of acceptance that WTMWK did and so doesn’t merit my attention right now. If you want more on Frank though I found Stephen Rose of the Progressive Policy Institute’s The Trouble With Class-Interest Populism good.

I like that you call folks like David Brooks out for their pop sociology. Before the advent of smart anonymous bloggers, I think their were sorts of MAD checks in place keeping people from getting called out in public on aspects of their pet mythologies.

I’m not sure you do so much better than them as you claim -citing internet links to studies here and there may just be window dressing your own pet myths. There’s still significant daylight between what you do in these posts and an expert who does serious research and carefully reviews the other relevant studies and is highly literate in the field.

Before the advent of smart anonymous bloggers, I think their were sorts of MAD checks in place keeping people from getting called out in public on aspects of their pet mythologies
I’m relying on the work of people who use their real names, even in the case of Brooks. Does “MAD” indicate anything, or is it being used to mean “extreme”?

I might live by myths but I don’t think I’ve really put forward any grand theory of politics here. I’m mostly just critiquing others.

Dain, it will be available VERY soon. As in they are in a truck headed to Chip right now. I posted a link to the Amazon page a while back, and it’s out of print and with limited availability, but I don’t think that indicates it’s unavailable. If you send an e-mail to Chip I think he’d be willing to sign a copy and send it to you.

TGGP is correct. I expect the full run of The Myth of Natural Rights and Other Essays to arrive early next week and I will begin shipping them out as soon as I receive them. The Amazon page will be revised as soon as their warehouse stock is supplied, but if you want to order a copy, you can also send cash, check, or money order to me directly. Email me at chipsmith55 AT gmail.com and I’ll provide instructions.

Lou Rollins will be signing copies, but these will take a little longer to ship, since he lives on the other side of the country. IF you want an autographed or inscribed copy, just let me know.

This whole business of shipping and transporting books and selling them sounds very exciting, much more exciting than it should sound. After all, someone writing a blogpost doesn’t excite me one bit. What is it about books that makes them so special? The idea that people have put a lot more effort into creating them? That surely isn’t the case for most books. But not all books are created equal. Fine books are exciting! I should buy a copy, but I am too lazy to buy. I do want an autographed copy (I have no idea what inscribed means).

I imagine it is exciting given how so many publications are money-losing but nevertheless persist. I’ve found my own experience quite enjoyable even though I’m far removed (physically at least) and have just been sitting in front of my computer transmitting bits like any pajama-clad blogger.

An inscribed book includes a personal message or salutation addressed to the recipient along with the author’s signature. An autographed book is simply signed. It’s a silly distinction, but some book nerds insist on clean signatures because they believe inscribed books are less valuable. The exception is an “association copy,” which is where important author A inscribes his book to important person B – like if Winston Churchill inscribed a copy of “My Early Life” to Joseph Stalin. Maybe something like:

My Dearest Soso,

Thought you might enjoy a glimpse into my youthful adventures. Wish you had been there.

[…] think nowadays) with some college education but not grad school. I dispelled myths about that here. The Dems draw their support both from the poor/working-class and from some quite wealthy coastal […]